There were many exceptions, but the Southern view as expressed by General Wade Hampton had only too much foundation: "There MAY be," he said, "an honest man connected with the Bureau." John Minor Botts, a Virginian who had remained loyal to the Union, asserted that many of the agents were good men who did good work but that trouble resulted from the ignorance and fanaticism of others.The minority members of the Ku Klux Committee condemned the agents as being "generally of a class of fanatics without character or responsibility."The chief activities of the Bureau included the following five branches:
relief work for both races; the regulation of Negro labor; the administration of justice in cases concerning Negroes; the management of abandoned and confiscated property; and the support of schools for the Negroes.
The relief work which was carried on for more than four years consisted of caring for sick Negroes who were within reach of the hospitals, furnishing food and sometimes clothing and shelter to destitute blacks and whites, and transporting refugees of both races back to their homes.Nearly a hundred hospitals and clinics were established, and half a million patients were treated.This work was greatly needed, especially for the old and the infirm, and it was well done.The transportation of refugees did not reach large proportions, and after 1866 it was entangled in politics.But the issue of supplies in huge quantities brought much needed relief though at the same time a certain amount of demoralization.The Bureau claimed little credit, and is usually given none, for keeping alive during the fall and winter of 1865-1866thousands of destitute whites.Yet more than a third of the food issued was to whites, and without it many would have starved.Numerous Confederate soldiers on the way home after the surrender were fed by the Bureau, and in the destitute white districts a great deal of suffering was relieved and prevented by its operations.The Negroes, dwelling for the most part in regions where labor was in demand, needed relief for a shorter time, but they were attracted in numbers to the towns by free food, and it was difficult to get them back to work.The political value of the free food issues was not generally recognized until later in 1866 and in 1867.
During the first year of the Bureau an important duty of the agents was the supervision of Negro labor and the fixing of wages.Both officials and planters generally demanded that contracts be written, approved, and filed in the office of the Bureau.They thought that the Negroes would work better if they were thus bound by contracts.The agents usually required that the agreements between employer and laborer cover such points as the nature of the work, the hours, food and clothes, medical attendance, shelter, and wages.To make wages secure, the laborer was given a lien on the crop; to secure the planter from loss, unpaid wages might be forfeited if the laborer failed to keep his part of the contract.When it dawned upon the Bureau authorities that other systems of labor had been or might be developed in the South, they permitted arrangements for the various forms of cash and share renting.But it was everywhere forbidden to place the Negroes under "overseers" or to subject them to "unwilling apprenticeship" and "compulsory working out of debts." The written contract system for laborers did not work out successfully.The Negroes at first were expecting quite other fruits of freedom.One Mississippi Negro voiced what was doubtless the opinion of many when he declared that he "considered no man free who had to work for a living." Few Negroes would contract for more than three months and none for a period beyond January 1, 1866, when they expected a division of lands among the ex-slaves.In spite of the regulations, most worked on oral agreements.In 1866 nearly all employers threw overboard the written contract system for labor and permitted oral agreements.Some states had passed stringent laws for the enforcing of contracts, but in Alabama, Governor Patton vetoed such legislation on the ground that it was not needed.General Swayne, the Bureau chief for the state, endorsed the Governor's action and stated that the Negro was protected by his freedom to leave when mistreated, and the planter, by the need on the part of the Negro for food and shelter.Negroes, he said, were afraid of contracts and, besides, contracts led to litigation.
In order to safeguard the civil rights of the Negroes, the Bureau was given authority to establish courts of its own and to supervise the action of state courts in cases to which freedmen were parties.The majority of the assistant commissioners made no attempt to let the state courts handle Negro cases but were accustomed to bring all such cases before the Bureau or the provost courts of the army.In Alabama, quite early, and later in North Carolina, Mississippi, and Georgia, the wiser assistant commissioners arranged for the state courts to handle freedmen's cases with the understanding that discriminating laws were to be suspended.General Swayne in so doing declared that he was "unwilling to establish throughout Alabama courts conducted by persons foreign to her citizenship and strangers to her laws." The Bureau courts were informal affairs, consisting usually of one or two administrative officers.There were no jury, no appeal beyond the assistant commissioner, no rules of procedure, and no accepted body of law.In state courts accepted by the Bureau, the proceedings in Negro cases were conducted in the same manner as for the whites.
